A Couple Questions 10 Weeks Out From Potential First Meet

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello BBM Team,

First, thank you all for the wonderful content you put out and the good work you are doing. After years of bro-style work and dabbling in various fitness trends, I started the SSNLP in August 2018 and switched over to BBM-style programming in January 2019. Your content on training, nutrition, and pain science has truly transformed my physical life. I finished law school and took the bar exam this past summer, started work at an associate at a law firm, and my wife and I just had our second child. Motivated by all your good content and the desire to keep training hard, I have switched to 5am workouts and earlier bedtimes to fit my work schedule and avoid taking away from family time. What was I going to do, not train? Anyway, thank you!

Background statistics:

  • 30 year old male
  • 5’10", 197 lbs, 33 inch waist
  • 1rms (tested late July 2019) 335lb Squat, 225 Bench, 405 Deadlift. Current e1rms are close to those numbers or a few pounds higher.

Questions:

  1. I have cycled through 6-8 week programs (3 days/week, plus 1-2 days GPP and some sporadic martial arts training) of strength and hypertrophy for the last few months. I am currently 3 weeks into a hypertrophy block, based on a slightly modified version of the legacy 3 day gpp - hypertrophy bias. I am thinking of entering a local powerlifting competition (my first) on December 11. This would give me 10 weeks, starting next Monday, to prepare. Do you think I should finish my hypertrophy block and then spend the remaining 6 - 7 weeks on a strength/peaking block? Or should I switch next week and do 10 weeks of strength/peaking?

  2. Any recommendation on how to program these next 10 weeks? Specifically, I am wondering if switching from 3 days to 4 days would be the right call at this time. On one hand, I figure the extra volume might be good leading up to my first meet. On the other hand, I wonder if switching from 3 days to 4 would be too big of a change leading up to a meet.

Thank you in advance for any advice you have; it is much appreciated. Keep up the excellent work!

2

Hey Frank,

Thanks for the props and I’m pumped at the prospect of signing up for your first meet soon :slight_smile: Congrats on all the recent life PRs as well!

I think if you sign up for this meet, you should do the Strength I template for the balance of what you have left. In other words, if you have 9 weeks to go, do the last 9 weeks of the that template. However, if you waffle long enough to not sign up until about 3-4 weeks out, I’d just do one of our free peaking templates.

-Jordan

3

Thanks so much, Jordan. I really appreciate the advice and encouragement. And your comment about what to do if I “waffle” long enough prompted me to take action: I purchased Strength I and will start week 5 on Monday. And I will be signing up for this meet in the next couple days. Thanks for giving me the push to go for it! Now I just have to figure out this whole singlet business . . .

4

Oh, one more question, if you don’t mind. I know you generally prefer other conditioning methods over running for HIIT and LISS conditioning unless people are fairly trained runners. I have been running on and off for years. In my context of meet prep, would you strongly advise against running for my GPP conditioning? I work out in my basement and a treadmill is all I have for cardio equipment. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what would be best at this point. Thanks again!

5

I would not run for conditioning while prepping for a powerlifting meet. I’d stick to walking in your case :slight_smile: